Some Pretty Rooms and Great Granddaughter Stories

I'm still doing physical therapy for the sciatica and now some chiropractic also. I've always loved chiropractic and it certainly can't hurt. I had a "massage" by a young man who is very familiar with the body. I hurt when he got though but I was hurting badly when I went to him, too. We'll see what happens. And I thank all of you for sending me personal advice. I am definitely taking the magnesium and it's helping. But I'm on pain killers at least once a day. That nerve sure can incapacitate you! It's certainly disrupted my life for 2 months now,

Also, reminding you again to go to my Pinterest page with over 15,300 pins and 26,423 followers so far. I pin every single day and there is nothing on there but beautiful images. Go see for yourself because I doubt I'll ever get them all on my blog here.
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And you know you're going to get some stories about our great granddaughters, too. Right? :-)

Some of the things the 4 year old said while we were over there recently:

At the dinner table: "Pass the French bread, my darling." [HUH!] But we did and she said, "Thank you." Her parents are very good at teaching her manners.

Then later at the table she said: "I have an announcement." And then told us what it was.

Then she told her dad to "Snap out of it. You need to focus, Dad!" We all just looked at her and wondered where that came from. Of course, she was trying to get his attention.

When we speak to her on the phone she always says, "Thank you for the call. And I love you, Nana and Poppop."

Then one night as she was being tucked into bed she told her mom: "You will never be alone because I love you so much. To be alone you would have to hide, because there is someone in this house that loves you so much...me."

When we took her on a surprise visit to ride a pony cart she later told her mom: "I had a great adventure today, Mom."

This is a story she told her mom on the way to work several months ago, all made up of course. She has an extreme imagination. "As a child living in Mexico we swam in the ocean and ate fairies with a little tomato and Parmesan cheese. And then I was a pirate captain in the Sea of Egypt who found a boy who wanted to be a pirate but didn't know how to swim. So we took him to Egypt Swim School, but when they got there it was actually a house filled with gems that were booby-trapped with nails and they all had to run away." [As my granddaughter told me: This kid is nuts! LOL] Oh, and she's never lived in Mexico.

I think we're creating a snob here!! But they are cute, great granddaughters, in general I mean.
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Blue is a beautiful color and I like it a lot also, so I thought you'd like this elegant home to check out.

This periwinkle color is lovely also. Very beautiful and intriguing.

I'm a gal who loves seeing a pretty laundry with all the pretty colors of cleaning paraphernalia, baskets, tins of soap, baskets of laundry, etc. This is gorgeous to me.

While not too elegant, it is something I'd love in a house big enough for it. Lovely and adore the colors.

This is cozy and intimate, more my taste.

A plethora of flowers over a draped door has me envisioning Mexico, which we visited many times. I love it more than any other place to vacation.

This reminds me of Mackenzie-Childs ware, which I've loved since the early 80s. They are a very quirky couple but produce gorgeous items for the home.

Even antiques shows looks gorgeous with all the lovely items they produce for sale. Not many around Idaho though.

How about this darling suitcase used as a storage for quilts for winter. Beautiful!

I thought this was a great idea for kids coming in from mud or snow or for washing the family dog. What a luxury this would be to the lady of the house.

Another flea market showing sweet sofas, desks and a plethora of desirable items we want. Cute!

A little sun room/porch to use as a place to laze around or eat in it in the summer time.

This is an English home—cozy, warm and life revolving around the kitchen wood stove.

I love this kitchen, especially the dining chairs and the french pastry cart.

Not sure what kind of flower this is. Looks like a multi-colored peony but I'm not familiar enough with flowers to be certain. Whatever it is it's beautiful.

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Linking up with Pink Saturday.   

A Story Today and Another One In A Few More Days.

This sciatica has kept me from blogging much lately. I'm on PT three times a week and started going to a chiropractor because the pain is so bad. Hence, not much is happening in my life. I "ice" my hip, left buttock and legs frequently. So see how exciting my life has been for the past 2 months. Wow, can you stand the excitement? Pain pills figure frequently in my life now but I record every single time I take one, even if it's a quarter, half or the full pill. I hate being on them but it is definitely necessary at the moment. The pain from that nerve can be and is debilitating. So here I am tonight thinking of things to blog about. Give me a little sympathy here, please. ;-)

My great granddaughters, featured in some photos below, are pretty funny. I'm relating a few stories today about them.

They love getting mail. We try to mail them something once a week. I'm not doing very well at the once-a-week thing though but they love getting anything in the mail, even a postcard. Sometimes I'll send them Dollar Store items or candy but most times it's a card or note in an envelope.

But the other day I found a doll's comb when cleaning. It looks to be the comb of the character Ariel that she got while she was over here visiting us last Thanksgiving. I put it in an envelope with a note and sent it to her. I had told her mum and her I was sending it so watch for it.

It arrived last Monday with a note from the postman saying that it exceeded its weight so as a courtesy they were leaving it in the mailbox, but they owed the post office a dollar. I was stymied because I have a digital scale for weight and always look up the postage on line even considering if it's thicker than needed, irregular shape, etc. and add additional postage for that. I'm very particular about things like that. But anyway we laughed about it.

But the rest of the story is that Miss C, the oldest to whom I sent it with the note, looked inside, took out the doll comb and hugged the note I sent to her chest. Her mum said she went on and on about her "letter", slept with it, lost it in her bed during the night and her mum had to come in and find it for her! When my granddaughter told me that we laughed ourselves silly. As I said, she loves getting letters, no matter what I say on the card or letter. Sometimes I write, "You [her mum] tell her a story." She doesn't know the difference yet but I'll have to be more careful when she learns to read well. And her father is the best story teller I've ever heard. He keeps ME enthralled with his stories at dinner or evening bedtime stories.

Here's the baby sister, Miss J with the curly dark hair.

She loves being outside and working in the yard.

That antique trunk is one I gave my granddaughter before the girls were born. I'm going to suggest that she paint it white. That will go more with her new decor she's implementing.

In Washington state one day can be like this, dressed in warm clothes...

And the very next day can be warm, dressed in an elegant chapeau. :-)

You can barely see the new chairs and table they have in kitchen nook in their new house. I'm loving that she's decorating similar to mine!!!!

Miss C is either Huck Finn or a bracero with this hat since she's Hispanic. She loves telling people "I'm an Irish Guacamole", since she can't say Guatemalan yet. It's still a tongue twister for her. She's a quick learner though.

This is Miss J with her pony tails. Her hair is so curly it looks short but it's getting long. The white splotches on the wall are different paint colors they're testing. The blue was on the walls of the family room when they moved in but it's gonna go real soon! The whole house will be painted along with all the woodwork trim and cabinets but it'll take them a couple of years I know because of having little munchkins around.

Her favorite color is purple, next is pink.

I saw this colander on the internet, Amazon I think, but I can't justify spending the money just because it's pink. My old one is about 40 years old and still working great.

I love this setting, especially that lovely room divider. The chairs are lovely and the roses just top it off for me.

Isn't this a unique idea for a home outside wall? I like it and think it's adorable. Love the blues also.

Beautiful, but a bit rich looking for me. I am truly a simple girl. Which reminds me of a saying I saw recently and think it is totally accurate:
Be pretty if you can,
Be witty if you must,
But be gracious if it kills you.
I truly try to live by that creed.

I find this kitchen divine. I like how they have an antique rug in the kitchen. I wish more people put rugs in their kitchen. I have rugs over my vinyl to soften my kitchen. It's a small kitchen but adequate for our needs...if we eat out 3 times a week! Notice the doggie bowls are higher than normal so as to help the dog not to have to bend over as much.

I'm going to be looking for something like this that will fit in our small kitchen. Finding the right dimensions at the right price will be my challenge.

This is designer toilet paper! Can you believe that? I'd buy it but I'm sure it costs a lot more than Cottonelle, which I love, and probably not as soft. It is gorgeous and would be fun to have around, but we go through a LOT of toilet paper.

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Linking up with Pink Saturday.  

Reaching My Decision on Dining Chairs

I haven't been blogging as much lately as I'm doing the exercises for sciatica and reading a lot. Today I'm going to go shopping. I need some new tops and hubby complimented me on a new one I bought last week so I'm going to go buy some new ones. At my age I am not a clothes horse anymore. I just wear what covers my body modestly and get on with it. I also bought a new leather chair for our family room as my physical therapist and others say I need a firmer seat than the one I'm in now provides. Okay, buying a new chair isn't a problem for ME! But firmness is essential for back muscles.

I'll try and be more diligent about posting as I love blogging but it isn't my whole life. This is the only thing I could think of to post today and I thought you'd like to see some pretty chairs done up right. :-)
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This was pretty with the large "flowers" tied with a wraparound fabric.

Sweet but not quite what I wanted either.

This was getting more like what I wanted. Remember, I'm a froufrou girl. ;-)

Tying ribbons on for this effect would have taken a lot of ribbon and I was trying for more froufrou than this so it wasn't quite right either.

This is lovely but wouldn't have worked as I wanted to cover most of the chair.

Can't you just see these being stepped on all the time? Of course, I could have made them shorter. Nah, beautiful but not quite right either.

I even considered something like this. This would have been simple and easy to make but I wanted something fancier. This would be great for patio chairs however.

This got me to thinking about 2 separate things for the chair. Something clicked here.

And this also got something clicking.

I used feather boas on some of my lamps and always have a few extra boas around just in case. I'll use a coupon from Joanns to have a small stockpile around. You never know when inspiration will hit and will involve boas and feathers!

This was a real consideration as I like it a lot but I thought on it some more.

This would have been easy also.

This is darling and it would have involved a bit of sewing. Beautiful table and chairs and seat covers. My two new ones are rounded high in the seat like this. But in the end I found some really pretty pink covers at Bed, Bath and Beyond. That involved NO sewing for me and that was a huge plus.

I loved this cover and this chair. The back of my new vintage chairs were not this lovely though. Two of my French chairs have cane on the seat and back, but not the two new craigslist find.

These are gorgeous but I really didn't want to make this many ruffles and sew that much.

So in the end this is what I did to the chairs. You can see the whole blog about redoing the chairs here. A tiny bit of sewing for the tops of the 2 chairs and that was it. Very simple.

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Linking up with Pink Saturday.  

Two French Chairs

I haven't posted for over a week but I've been under the weather. I had been having pain in my left leg and after trying my best to diagnose myself—:-)—I made an appointment with my doctor. She thinks it's sciatica, gave me a prescription for pain killers, muscle relaxants and a prescription for physical therapy. I start Monday. My left leg all the way from the "hip" down to my ankle has hurt so bad I've been on pain killers. I'd cut them into quarters to try and cut the pain. I don't want to become a drug addict!

Now, my husband and I are retired and have scaled down from 5,000 square feet to 1800 square feet. We don't have a formal dining room anymore and that's fine with us. We just have an area off our kitchen to eat. For us a formal dining room would be a wasted space. So I settled on this but knew I'd make it a special place when we bought the house 9 years ago.

I've been looking for a pair of chairs for a long time now. A friend told me she got her gorgeous french dining chairs at Savers, a local thrift store. I perused the place but found nothing, but then she warned me I'd have to be diligent. She painted her chairs white and added a red and white check fabric and they are beautiful. Lusting again. I know, I know.

So finally I found 2 chairs on craigslist that would do. They were sturdy enough, all wood with an open back and a piece of carving down the center of the back, already a bit shabby and cheap at $75 for the two chairs. I couldn't get over to his house fast enough!

I didn't particularly want to paint them or change the seat covers OR make new seat covers, which would have been easy so refer to the first paragraph above as to why. And I recently bought some pink seat covers for all the chairs to have a more cohesive feel to them. Finally, stores are getting more pink in their stock. Even men are wearing more pink lately.

Then I saw this website on etsy for these. SweetDreamTutus and the url is: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SweetDreamsTutus

I have to say this lady was a doll. She answered my questions quickly. I ordered them and she sent them to me in rapid time. I recommend her highly. This photo is on her etsy site; it's not my house. I'm going to order another pair in pink also. I love them!

I have no idea why I'm posting so many photos of these chairs but I wanted you to see how cute they are now after their renovation. So now I have 2 cane back and seat French chairs and 2 of these. I don't have a "before" photo and I'll be darned if I was taking those covers off to show you the before. But they weren't fancy so I made them Fancy.

I've had this fabric for years and was down to my last couple of yards. I absolutely adore this fabric. It's a designer fabric and nice and thick. Absolutely gorgeous in person.

I didn't know how to make them "fit" perfectly and was trying to get every bit of fabric out of the last of the roll I had bought many years ago. So I left them open on the sides and tied them with ribbon. One chair has pink grosgrain and the other one has white satin ribbon. I ran out of the grosgrain and am trying to scale down my craft room—and I'm also lazy—so I used what I had on hand.

I added a boa and a pink paper flower.

Trying to get as many views as I can to show you. You're probably sick of the photos by now, but WAIT! There are even a few more. ;-)

Closeup of the tutu.

The white ribbon ties on the sides come on the tutu.

So you can adjust it to the chair width. Fantastic!

I think this is one of the loveliest lamps ever. A great color, shape and just the right amount of "aging" done to it.

Lovin' this pretty bed and pillows.

Now, this is not my can but I've done this with coffee cans I get from friends since we don't drink coffee. And it is so very easy to make them gorgeous with paint, decals or paper mod-podged on it.

I would absolutely love to find a chair like this. It is gorgeous, but my guess is it isn't comfy to sit in for any length of time.

There are times I'd love to have something like this for my home office and then I think: I have a whole room to myself. Isn't it true that we're sometimes unhappy with the things we have? It takes time to recognize our blessings. While this armoire is gorgeous, I'm blessed to have a whole room for my office. And another room to craft in. I sounded ungrateful but I'm truly not.

Oh my goodness, this is just gorgeous. I'd probably have painted it pink but I do love that color on it. I think it would go well in my living room.  ;-)

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Linking up with Pink Saturday.